Improving housing standards

The Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS) was introduced in February 2004. It is the main way we measure housing quality in Scotland.

Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS)

It means social landlords must make sure their tenants' homes:

are energy efficient, safe and secure

not seriously damaged

have kitchens and bathrooms that are in good condition

We introduced a minimum housing standard in Scotland to try to make sure that no property ever falls below this level.

Some landlords may be prevented, by social or technical reasons, from completing improvements required by SHQS. For example, if tenants or owner-occupiers do not agree.

These exemptions are allowed under the SHQS guidance. The Scottish Housing Regulator is responsible for monitoring the performance of social landlords.

Social housing and public sector landlords

We set a target for local authority landlords and registered social landlords to bring their housing stock up to SHQS standard by April 2015.

Since 2012, this target has been incorporated in the Scottish Social Housing Charter. Other public sector landlords, for example university accommodation and the Ministry of Defence, are exempt from meeting this target.

SHQS Guidance

Scottish Housing Quality Standard guidance was published in March 2011:

The Scottish Housing Regulator

This information is published for each RSL, and projects its SHQS compliance rate over time. The SHQS also publishes data on landlords.

In March 2014, SHR published an SHQS progress report. It covers a range of issues and was based on self-assessment information given by RSLs and local authority landlords. It showed that landlords expected that 2,408 houses would not meet the target, which is less than 0.4 per cent of all social houses.

Common Housing Quality Standard

Different housing quality standards apply to owner-occupied, private rented and social rented homes. Where there is a mixture of tenure types it can be difficult to organise repair and maintenance work in buildings.

We convened a Common Housing Quality Standard Forum which considered a number of topics including: essential fabric elements, safety elements and scope of a common standard. See the topics considered in this factsheet: Common Housing Quality Standard topic papers.

Improving standards on Gypsy/Traveller sites

Site providers will need time to plan and carry out the required improvements, so these standards will not take effect until 2018. We are working with site providers and people from Gypsy/Traveller communities to monitor progress towards this standard being successfully put in place.